 |
| She smells like strawberries. I, however, do not. |
Did you ever wonder how broken promises smell? Wonder no
more! I can tell you from personal experience that broken promises smell like a
sweaty linebacker who has attempted unsuccessfully to cover the stench by
bathing in cheap cologne.
Allow me to
explain.
You see, my
kid talks a lot. Yes, yes, soon we’ll make the leap together from motor mouth
to migraine-inducing odor. As I was saying, my kid talks a lot. At home I can
tune it out, but in class with 23 other kids also vying for attention, I’m sure
her teacher is keenly aware that Chris is one of the loudest. So far every
single correspondence we’ve had with a teacher since the beginning of her
education has read, “Chris continues to excel academically. But she still needs
to work at not talking during quiet times.” They might have just printed up a
whole stack of these reports at her birth.
I know
she’s smart and it’s tempting to blame her big mouth on being bored in class.
But what my father drilled into my own developing skull years ago is that there
simply is no excuse for not following classroom rules. If he had raised her, it
would be “respect your elders and speak only when spoken to.” I don’t go quite
that far, but I have tried to impress upon her that it’s incredibly
disrespectful to distract the teacher and the rest of the class that is trying
to learn something you may already know.
At heart Chris
is a good kid. She knows there are certain times she is supposed to be quiet in
class but for some reason she just can’t help herself. Must….talk…can’t….keep…mouth…closed.
So we’ve
tried grounding. We’ve tried withholding TV and toys. We’ve tried the
disappointment speech and the angry speech and come pretty close to begging. I
mean, I don’t want her to be branded the kid who won’t shut up, because you
know those teachers warn one another about their little, uh, angels.
Finally, we
resorted to bribery. Yeah, I admit it, I bribe my kid.
“If you can
make it through one whole month with good behavior reports, we can do something
special that you choose,” was my final resort.
“Ooooh,
maybe I can have Icees every day for a month!” was Chris’ first choice. Since
I’m so smart I realized that daily frozen colored sugar water would only
compound the problem and I nixed that idea. Instead, I urged her, she should choose an
activity like a movie, or a zoo visit, or even a trip up north to go sledding.
“OK, stop!”
She said. “I know exactly what I want to do. I’ve wanted to do it my whole
entire life. I want you to take me ice skating. Pinky promise.”
Uh, what?
Ice skating? Not something I imagined I’d ever do again in my life after the
one feeble attempt in high school in which I couldn’t even stand on the skates
and gave up after about three minutes. Plus, I suspect she really only wants to
go ice skating because she thinks that means she will be wearing a sparkly
outfit like those girls she saw in the Olympics.
 |
| I don't smell like this either. |
“But what the hey,” I thought.
“It’s not like I have to worry about it. I mean, it’s been a year and a half and
we haven’t made it through three weeks without a negative behavior report
because of talking.”
I should
have had more faith in my kid, because lo and behold, she did it. The month of
December sealed the deal and filled me with terror. Can you imagine me on ice
skates? You’ve seen my version of walking (tripping) and I can’t afford any
more ER visits. Plus, I can just imagine the Richter scale baffling local
scientists every time I hit the deck. Double plus, I really have no desire to look at
the ceiling of the ice rink that many times.
So I put it
off. Then put it off some more. Then Christmas and New Year’s came and went.
Suddenly I had no more excuses and felt like a pretty crummy parent when Chris
wailed in the car, “When are you going to take me ice skating? You pinky
promised!”
Ugh.
But then
fate stepped in with the perfect excuse. Bronchitis! I honestly tried to get up
the gumption to take her ice skating, I swear. But I couldn’t make it on a
short walk with the dogs to the mailbox without a major coughing fit. So,
reluctantly I told Chris we’d either have to put off her ice skating dreams
another week or two, or she could choose something else.
“Choose
something else!” I silently willed her.
After a lot
of back and forth, she finally chose a girl’s day – lunch out with just the two
of us and maybe a little shopping. This I could handle. Besides, the kid
desperately needed new shoes of the unscented variety (she has chronically
stinky feet).
So today we
waited impatiently for the mall to open and then hit the road. She counted out
her savings of nickels and dimes for a pair of ice cream cone earrings. We
agreed after much arguing on a pair of non-high-heel shoes (Seriously! She’s 6!
Why on EARTH are all the kids sandals made with wedge heels?!)
As we were
making our way out of the department store, I told Chris to hang on while I
made a quick glance around the purse clearance section. No problem, she said,
as she wandered an aisle or two over and unbeknownst to me sampled not one, not
two, but at least five different varieties of perfume.
Let it be a
lesson to you, if you remark, “Whew! Someone really went overboard with the
cologne!” and your normally vocal child doesn’t comment, you are in for some
trouble. It’s not your imagination; everyone in the checkout line really is
staring at you and talking about you – or rather your kid’s aroma. It hit home
for me when she touched me on the cheek to get my attention while we were
waiting for the cashier and my eyes began to water.
“It was
you!” I spat out. “You’re the one who sprayed the perfume!”
“Only a
little bit,” she said. Yeah right.
 |
| Give it up. A bath won't turn back time. |
I got her
out of there and into the car before a HazMat team was called. Big mistake. I rolled down the windows but Eau
De Everything had already permeated the fabric seat cushions. I plugged my nose
and pulled into the Target parking lot where I drug her into the bathroom and
told her to wash her hands. Meanwhile, I soaked four paper towels with water
and rubbed at her neck.
“You know,
it only takes one squirt of cologne,” I told her as I tried to hold her down. I
guess it tickles when you rub a paper towel on your neck.
“I did do
one squirt. Just of a lot of different kinds. I couldn’t decide which one I
liked the best so I tried them all,” she replied. No duh. I could smell “them
all”.
After all
that, I assumed we had solved the problem. But we barely made a dent and I had
to chew gum since the scents were making me sick. When we finally arrived home
I quickly agreed that she could ride her bike, thinking the fresh air might
blow off the stink. But it was apparent that wouldn’t work either as a kid on
his skateboard constantly kept moving upwind from her.
Soon, I
could take it no longer and drug her inside to shower. I scrubbed her neck
again with a rag that I constantly had to keep wringing out since it was
drenched with toilet water. Eventually we got the job done. But after all
her protestations that she didn’t need a bath that she already smelled good
from all the perfumes, I had to come out and say it, “No you don’t. You really,
really stink.”
Chris
looked me square in the eye. I thought she might cry or be offended. But she
simply blamed it all on me.
“It’s all your
fault,” she said. “This never would have happened if you had taken me ice
skating.”
No comments:
Post a Comment